Hospitals and other care facilities use items of equipment to move and support patients. Typically, such items of equipment tend to be specialized items of equipment including hospital beds, wheelchairs, gurneys and operating tables.
Hospitals and other care facilities occasionally have a need to support and move “bariatric” patients having body weights in excess of 300 lbs. It may be cost efficient for a hospital or care facility to procure an array of specialized equipment such as beds, wheelchairs, gurneys and operating tables to support or move non-bariatric patients. It is too costly to procure an array of specialized items of equipment to accommodate a small number of bariatric patients. However, it is cost efficient for an institution to obtain a very small number of multi-functional items of equipment to accommodate the relatively rare bariatric patient. Since bariatric patients and their care givers can be injured when a bariatric patient is moved between specialized items of equipment, it is advantageous to employ one multi-functional item of equipment so that there is no need to move a bariatric patient between specialized items of equipment. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a multi-functional item of equipment capable of supporting bariatric patients that can function as a gurney, a bed, a wheelchair, an operating table and an x-ray table and which can also transition between performing these various functions without removing the patient from the item of equipment. Care givers can also sustain injuries while helping a bariatric patient to stand. Accordingly, what is also needed is a multi-functional item of equipment that can tilt a bariatric patient into a standing position as well as perform all of the above described functions.